“It is no wonder that Celtic Christianity emphasised the immanence or nearness of God. God was present everywhere: he was in the trees, he was in the rivers, he was in the woods, he was in animals, he was in people, he was in the sea… Advancement in holiness, according to the Celtic way, involves an effort to develop an awareness of the presence of God in everything and everybody — above us, below us and all around us at the four points of the compass.” — Seán Ó Duinn
Seán Ó Duinn (1932-2017) was an Irish Benedictine monk, horticulturalist, and authority in Celtic spirituality both Christian and pre-Christian. His book Where Three Streams Meet celebrates how Irish spirituality emerges from an integration of the “three streams” of ancient pagan, mythic Celtic and mystical Christian wisdom. At its heart, Celtic spirituality is non-dual, which means among other things that the line separating “Pagan” from “Christian” faith and practice simply proves to be no real line at all: that these “streams” flow together into the single ocean of divine love and grace.
I spoke to an Irish priest once and asked him if he had known Fr. Seán; he didn’t know him personally but had friends who did. “What was he like?” I asked him. “Oh, my friend said didn’t you know but that Seán had a touch of the fairies about him,” was all he would say — and it was not meant as a criticism.
I chafe at how Fr. Seán uses traditional language, like referring to God using male pronouns, or speaking of the spiritual life as “advancement in holiness.” I also know I need to be generous in acknowledging the context of his life, as a Catholic monk who came of age before Vatican II. And given that context, it is lovely to see how deeply imbued his writing is in the Celtic mysticism of the Irish landscape. God is present everywhere, in all things, in all sentient beings.
To be holy means, first of all, to seek and find this awareness of divinity shimmering everywhere. That is the foundation of living a “good” or “sanctified” life: not a narrow moralism, not a blind obedience to external authority, but simply a deep ability to see the God hidden in plan sight, literally everywhere. It reminds me of the Buddhist concept of “Right View.” Learning to see clearly may not be the summit of a life well lived, but it is certainly an important foundation.
Quotation Source: Seán Ó Duinn, Where Three Streams Meet: Celtic Spirituality (Dublin: The Columba Press, 2000), p. 87.